So Close, Yet So Far
by I.Tripped.Over.Reality
Summary: Most secrets are ultimately leeched out. But when your life depends upon them, the consequences are hard to handle. Percy and Annabeth had a great relationship - but Poseidon and Athena never approved. When the gods found out, their world was shattered. Are the two ever going to be able to pick up the pieces? Because right now, they're just strangers with memories.


**Hey, guys!**

**Yes indeed, this is the MIA ITOR! **

**I know I'm screwed, big time. I'm not going to lie; I've been neglecting my writing. But that's going to change now.**

**I'm going to be completely honest with you guys, I hate giving excuses, but I haven't come on for quite a few reasons. In brief, they include school, social life, just life, an internship and other stuff. I'm not going to bore you with the details. If you want to know, there's a short post that explains it on my blog - **** . **

**I can't update fast. I'm going to tell you that. But I will update. First, this story gets completed. After this, "A Brother's Love" will be completed and then I'll do "Your Guide to The Titan War II: The Last Olympian". Do you think I should put it up for adoption?**

**Anyway, that's enough of an "I'm back!" message. For those of you who don't know, this is one of my old stories. I took it down because I wanted to rework on it. Now, I'm putting it back up. **

**Warning: This is not a happy story. It has stuff about suicide and cutting. I'm against both of them, but since it's a very real thing, it's in here. If you cut yourself or are suicidal, please get help. It doesn't mean you get a shrink, but get help in the form of a friend. If you need it, you can PM me.**

**Disclaimer: I own none of the characters in Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Just putting this here once.**

**Thanks for reading. Hope you like it. Do read and REVIEW!**

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I sat alone in the Athena cabin, my blonde hair pulled up in a bun. I was wearing a black t-shirt and loose, comfortable mid-thigh shorts. All my siblings were having fun outside, leaving me in peace.

I was working absentmindedly on a temple I wanted to construct for my mother, with my iPod plugged into my ears. I was trying hard to distract myself from Percy Jackson – my ex boyfriend.

Ouch. That hurt.

We had broken up just a month back after a secret relationship that lasted a year. Since Athena and Poseidon have always had this age-old hatred for each other, they were completely against the idea of Percy and me dating. That's why Percy and I had to resort to getting into a relationship secretly because our feelings were too strong to be ignored. We had a blissful year together,. Oh gods, it was the best year of my life. Sure, we had our ups and downs, but looking back, I'd live through every single moment again, good or bad, because I was with him. I missed him so much.

Why had we broken up, you'd wonder.

It wasn't because we'd stopped loving each other. No.

I knew I still loved him with all my heart, and Percy reciprocated my feelings. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me.

What happened, though, was just tragic…

_There's Percy, alone in the woods. We are free and just strolling by._

"_Seaweed Brain," I hiss._

_He turns around, sees me and smiles his lopsided smile. It sends my heart racing._

_I take his hand and pull him towards myself. It has been a long time since we've been alone together. I hold him close and feel his arms wrap around me, enveloping me in his heady scent – the scent of the sea that I've missed so much. He makes me me feel happy and secure. _

_He lets go of me suddenly, fearing that someone would come. In our relationship, he surprisingly is the paranoid one. He just kisses the top of my head and begins to walk away._

"_Percy!" I whisper, making an expression that, as I will later find out, melts his heart. _

_He walks back to me and I put my arms around his neck, standing slightly on my toes to press my lips against his._

_We share a chaste, two second kiss as he pulls away and I sigh in contentment. He walks away to wherever he needs to be. I walk back to the Athena cabin, enjoying the lingering sensation of his lips on mine._

_Turns out, my mother is visiting the cabin today._

_She is inside, and so are the rest of my siblings._

"_Annabeth," she says._

"_Hi, Mom," I reply._

"_Come here," she says, stepping outside the cabin. She takes me to an area where no one can eavesdrop. "I saw what you just did with him," she says, and my blood runs cold._

_Her tone is disappointed and disapproving. "I saw you kiss Percy Jackson, Annabeth! What were you thinking? A son of Poseidon and a daughter of Athena can never be more than just friends! Is that understood?"_

_I have tears in my eyes. I know Percy is gone forever. My mom will take drastic steps to keep me away from him, and Poseidon will do the same._

"_Why did you do it?" she asks, anger and pain evident in her voice._

"_I love him, mom," I whisper, tears streaming down my cheeks._

"_Does that mean you'll go and kiss him? Did you think about the consequences? How it would spoil your reputation, my reputation all through Camp and Olympus? Your future? Percy's future? Your feelings need to be in control! And this is definitely __**not **__the age to do such stuff! You're so distracted, you're spoiling both your lives."_

_She is so hurt, pained, shocked and disappointed that I begin to sob. In my sudden grief, I don't think about how a lot of her words are complete BS. _

_"I'm sorry mom, I never thought about this. You're right. I-"_

_Instead, this is what I say. I leave my sentence incomplete. I'm thinking about how what she says __**is **__right. I don't care about my reputation; it won't be spoilt anyway, but my mother, and Percy's life. That isn't okay. _

I caught myself getting lost into the past and thinking of it as the present. I shook myself mentally. But still, I couldn't help but slip back.

The next day, Percy and I had talked. We had come to the mutual agreement that my mother was right. His father hadn't talked to him, then, at least, which was lucky, since he hadn't had to go through what I did. Athena had never hit me in my whole life and Percy was taking all the blame upon himself. It had shocked me, too, when she was strangling me, She didn't do it hard enough to kill me, though.

So yeah, we had broken up. We'd decided to remain friends.

_Friends._ Yeah right. Like that was happening.

Athena and Poseidon had banned that too, and we were under constant surveillance by Chiron, but we did decide that that was stupid of them and they wouldn't come in between our friendship.

And what did Percy do?

He chose to pretend that I didn't exist.

It confused me so much. At first, it felt like he'd gotten over me, but when I looked into his eyes, I could see his love. Then, I talked to him. He told me that his life wasn't too miserable because he knew I loved him, but he did feel lonely.

And yes, I was right – Percy Jackson was trying to ignore me.

He did so because he wanted to move on. But even still, I didn't think it was justified of him to ignore me if I asked him something that I could ask a stranger.

He never even talk to me then. Whenever Grover brought me up, he would either pretend he was deaf or just walk away. Whenever Juniper tried to tell him to stop ignoring me, he would snap at her that it was his life and he could live the way he wanted to.

He was unfriendly to his best friends too, and he hung around alone or with other people he wasn't too close too. They weren't people who could ever be good friends, either.

At the same time, I could see the conflict in him.

On some rare days, he'd talk to me and tease me and we'd have fun, on others he'd just stare into my eyes for some time and for the rest? He pretended that I didn't exist.

I couldn't understand what was happening. I was the only one initiating conversation. _I _asked _him _how he was dealing with it. He never bothered for me. He didn't show me that he cared. He saw me everyday - the lifeless body, the girl who barely ate and drank, skipped meals as much as possible, almost never smiled. But he never lifted a finger to try and make me smile the way he used to.

So, I came to the conclusion that Percy loved me, but had stopped caring for me. It didn't make sense to me either, but that's just how it was.

Everyone else believed that he didn't love me/care about me truly.

_Percy doesn't care about me._

I held my knees to my chest and burst into tears.

"You don't care about me," I whispered to myself, sobbing.

It hurt like Hades. It was bad enough to lose him.

After five minutes of crying, anger built up inside me.

"He doesn't care, and I don't need to cry over that. Its okay, it doesn't matter. But first…" My thoughts trailed away.

I pulled out a blade I hid in my bag and held it over my wrist.

_We're sitting on the beach, lost in deep conversation. We're talking about self-harm. Suddenly, he turns to me. "__Annabeth, you're never going to cut on your wrists, shoulders and legs, _if_ you cut at all." Percy's warning resounds in my head._

"Oh yeah?" I thought bitterly. "Watch me".

I pressed the blade to my wrist and shut my eyes tightly at the pain. It hurt in a soothing manner. It felt sourly good to be defying Percy. Not that he'd notice, anyway. I'd cut myself so much, I'd cried so much, and he had absolutely no inkling of that.

I put away the blade with a sigh and felt my wrist smarting. I saw a couple of fat drops of blood and brushed them away. My cuts were swollen up.

One of my favourite songs – 'I Want You To Know' by 'Lifehouse' played on my iPod.

**When will the cycle stop?  
When will the story end?  
This is where I get off;  
I can't go there anymore,**

_I'm sorry, if there's anyone who cares about me. I can't take much longer Demigods strive to live, and here I want nothing more than death._

**It's too hard to ignore the signs,**

It was completely visible that he didn't care. I felt hurt, and bitter.

**Where do these tears come from?  
It feels like they never dry,**

I remembered the nights I'd spent crying over this stupid boy - the boy who had stolen my heart.

The boy, whom I'd love forever.

_**What have we both become?  
We are strangers in time, **_

That's what it was like now. After being so close together, we'd cut of all our ties. After having been so close to someone, suddenly pretending that you had never had anything to do with them makes you feel like your whole life had been a lie.

**Where blood is our only tie,**

**And I want you to know,  
That I loved you most,**

_Correction: I still love you most._

**And it breaks my heart to see you go,**

_Correction #2: It kills me to see you go_

I switched off my iPod. I wasn't going to cry over someone who didn't care for me. It was hard to accept it, especially when my brain was fighting against it, but I knew it was the only way I'd stop wanting him to hug me and care for me and ask me how I was doing. He didn't have to.

I shut of all other thoughts as best as I could and went back to my 'homework'.

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**Do you guys think I should abandon this or continue this? I still have my old chapters which could get modified, but yeah. What do you say? Trash or keep?**

**Please do review!**

**~ I Tripped Over Reality**


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